Teal Propoloma – The fan-shaped hat

New blog post! I made a heavily embellished teal and silver hat for my Byzantine costume wardrobe

Back in 2016 I made a Byzantine costume for an event/competition (where I won first place in the advanced category!) and part of that was a gorgeous, fun, huge fan-shaped hat called the Propoloma. My pattern was speculative, and I could see two different ways to accomplish the hat – but liked the idea of a very packable hat, especially considering how often SCA events are well out of town and require costumes that will pack up into a suitcase or duffle bag easily.

The first hat was golden, which worked well with that first costume I made (blue, with red and gold accessories) and it also worked really well with the second Byzantine costume I made too (green with gold)…

…. but then I was gifted this amazing teal top embellished with silver beads, sequins, and French wire… and the ONLY thing I could see in my mind’s eye for this was elements for another Byzantine accessory.

A pointy hat for my Viking wardrobe

Pointed “santa” hat

Even though the costumers who aim for authenticity seem to loathe the pointy, toque-like, ‘santa’ hat… I wanted to make one nonetheless.

Kaarina Iron Age Hat

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Photo above from Beothuk’s Flickr feed. Direct link, no copyright violation intended.

In another instalment of “how much work can I do last-minute before an event?” I decided to tackle the Kaarina Iron Age (Finnish) hat.

This is a much-later post, as I actually made this earlier, but never actually finished it off, so put off posting this. As I’m going through my archive of drafts, I figured I’d share it – even in the stage it’s in.

A (twisted) Mad Hatter’s Hat – Complete

A Mad Hatter style hat for a costume party

Ages ago I posted the construction details for a Mad Hatter style hat for an event – however I ended up getting sick right before the event, and never finished off the last few details of the rest of the costume – and ended up not attending the event. 

Horned hennin V4

V-neck Burgundian gown worn with a white horned hennin

While constructing the thid version of my horned hennin, (which isn’t complete yet…) I was struck with a different idea, so kind of dropped that project (for the time being) and went back to the drafting table.

I wanted to continue on the path trying to make a collapsable and packable hennin, and decided that for this one I would do an all-white hennin, like some of the inspiration images from the research I did when constructing my second version of a horned hennin in red velvet.